Review
Redstar's map Fogdown is what I consider a classic 'old-school' map in a new digital world. It has all the elements you want in a map as well as being a work of art in its own right. A great color pallete that is subtle and pleasing to the eye. You can immediately see that a certain amount of detail went into every part of the map, from individual city buildings to the map title, from the water to the lighting effects. All of these aspects are what make this a map of the month.

Artist's Notes
The City of Fogdown is a floating city-state metropolis and a common and way point between several major cities along the Sword Coast. Its two arcane-clockwork lighthouses are lit day and night, and are a bitter-sweet site for the hundreds of merchant ships making their way through the fog-haunted area. The majority of the islands inhabitants share a common story of generations as rogues and thieves living in desperate tenements and slums in a rigid, class divided society. It is a place where corrupt merchant princes, deranged City Senators, mad cultists and cruel guildmasters all vie for wealth, influence and above all: power.

I started Fogdown as a homebrew campaign loosely based in Forgotten Realms over eight years ago during college. After a few years on hiatus, some old friends and I decided to make a return to the old campaign, this time with the help of the internet (thanks MapTools!). I took the opportunity to recreate the map in a digital format. If you're interested in reading more about the campaign, check out our wiki/blog: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/fogdown

When I first started the map, I was going for more of an old school Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms style. As the map progressed, I decided to incorporate more semi-realistic features such as shadows, gradients, and textures. The result, I hope, takes a little of both: simple, clean basic mapping, with semi- realistic texturing and shading for depth. I drew the entire map free-style in Flash (to get clean vector shapes) which I then imported to Photoshop for coloring, layering, texturing, etc.

Original Thread
Click here to view the original thread by the author (http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3037)